posted 10-25-2007 05:01 PM               

quote:

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SAN ANTONIO, Texas (AP)-- Astronaut Lt. Cmdr. M. Scott Carpenter, the second American to orbit the earth, entered Wilford Hall Air Force Hospital Monday for surgery.

A hospital spokesman said Carpenter is to undergo surgery for removal of hemorrhoids Tuesday morning. He will be hospitalized the remainder of the week.

The astronaut will not make a geology field trip to New Mexico this week as originally scheduled. However, the Manned Spacecraft Center at Houston said he will participate in a Navy underwater test the latter part of July near Bermuda.

Space Agency spokesmen said the surgery as minor and had been planned for some while.

Carpenter was the second of the original 7-man Project Mercury astronaut team at the hospital Monday.

Former astronaut John H. Glenn Jr., who preceded Carpenter in orbiting the earth, spent about an hour with his doctor for what a spokesman called a routine check-up.

Glenn, disabled by an inner ear injury suffered in a fall February 26, remains on convalescent leave from Wilford Hall, where he spent more than a month after the accident.

Carpenter will become the fourth of the original seven Mercury astronauts selected in 1959 to undergo surgery.

Alan B. Shepard Jr., the first U.S. spaceman, had 20 percent of his thyroid gland removed in a Jan. 17 operation.

Donald K. Slayton had a lymph gland removed in 1959 and LeRoy Gordon Cooper Jr. underwent a gall bladder operation in 1960.

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posted 10-25-2007 09:32 PM            

This is an interesting press release, not least because it discusses hemorrhoids! I have come across several other MSC press releases from the early 1960s that announce astronauts' medical problems. The most memorable was one that said Bill Anders couldn't do a water survival test in the Gulf of Mexico because he had a cold.

Contrast that with the highly secretive environment now, when any astronaut health problem (short of a thousand mile drive with diapers handy) is so top-secret that even we in the NASA in-house life sciences research community may not know what their health issues may be--even those relevant to our own research.

posted 10-26-2007 11:20 AM               

Cheers,

posted 10-30-2007 01:12 PM            

Interesting article.

posted 10-30-2007 02:50 PM               

Yes, thanks, the clippings are interesting, as it shows her great eye for newsworthiness. I too think it would be part of an interesting book. I have her syndicated columns too, which I am researching now in this same vein. Thanks for the encouragement!